Finished my 4h rest shift at 7am. Had two expedition meals, a lot of Matty Clarke’s pemmican, some raisins, some honey in warm water. Initially lots of uncertainty about the plan today. When I got up, the weather was already in severe non-compliance with the forecasts.
What do you do with naughty weather? You play it by ear and simply stay constantly prepared to lift the anchor and get rowing. That’s what we did. We left the oars in their riggers, left most of the other gear like cooker, utensils, water canisters, drinking bottles, etc. in their safe storage locations. Didn’t spread out our personal gear like unused DryRobes and jackets, food provisions and snacks, on deck (I might well be the worst at that, hands up).
At 9am the skipper announced that we’d leave at 10am. The plan was to fight against relatively low predicted headwinds for 4h and make it the 6 miles to the next reasonably safe anchoring location. Then play it by ear again.
At 10am we were on our way. Lifting the anchors had required the efforts of two of us, three of us for a short moment. It had turned out that one of the anchors had a whole marine botanical garden and some peculiar bivalves sitting on it, which took a minute to clean off.
The rowing itself wasn’t even that hard, compared with some of the complete mess we’ve been through (like making just over 1 knot for mile after mile). We managed on average 1.6 knots. However, Leven took Karts’ binoculars to scan the horizon. “All white horses” (breaking waves, indicating strong winds, in this case headwinds). It was the death knell for this morning’s rowing efforts. After just one mile (1.8km, 1.2 statute miles) we laid anchor again.
I had a nap. Then from 8 to 11:30pm we continued rowing past the DEW Line Station to a small cove at one of the smaller, unnamed Richardson Islands. The 7 mile (12km, 8 statute miles) row in the dusk through the archipelago was quite something. About two thirds into our row we passed by a well-maintained small cabin near the shore of one of the islands. But no sign of people.
